Affectivity in Interaction

How do participants display affectivity in social interaction? Based on recordings of authentic everyday conversations and radio phone-ins, this study offers a fine-grained analysis of how recipients of affect-laden informings deploy sound objects, i.e. interjections (oh, ooh and ah) and paralinguistic signals (whistle and clicks), for responsive displays of affectivity. Examining the use of such sound objects across a number of interactional activities including news telling, troubles talk, complaining, assessments and repair, the study provides evidence that the sound pattern and sequential placement of sound objects systematically contribute to their specific meaning-making in interaction, i.e. the management of sequence organisation and interactional relevancies (e.g. affiliation). Presenting an in-depth analysis of a little researched area of language use from an interactional linguistic perspective, the book will be of theoretical and methodological interest to an audience with a background in linguistics, sociology and conversational studies.

1. Acknowledgements, pix; 2. I. Introduction; 3. Introduction, p3-8; 4. II. Background; 5. 1. Preliminaries: Affectivity and sound objects in an interactional linguistic perspective, p11-24; 6. 2. Approaching sound objects: Previous research on interjections, discourse markers and vocalisations, p25-40; 7. 3. Approaching affectivity in talk-in-interaction I: Previous research on prosody, p41-52; 8. 4. Approaching affectivity in talk-in-interaction II: Previous research on conversational activities, p53-72; 9. III. An analysis of responsive affect-laden sound objects in talk-in-interaction; 10. 5. Affectivity and sound objects: An interactional linguistic perspective, p75-82; 11. 6. Affect-laden oh in repair sequences and news tellings, p83-130; 12. 7. Affect-laden oohs in radio phone-ins and in mundane complaint sequences/troubles talk, p131-170; 13. 8. Types of affect-laden ahs in troubles talk and deliveries of bad news, p171-222; 14. 9. More affect-laden sound objects, p223-242; 15. IV. Summary and conclusions; 16. Summary, p245-256; 17. References, p257-272; 18. Appendix, p273-278; 19. Subject index, p279-280; 20. Name index, p281